


always

by orphan_account



Series: lover i'll wait for you always [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Australia, F/F, Femlock, Genderswap, Johnlock - Freeform, Lesbians!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the fall, where Joan Watson is alone in the world and trying to cope. Will draw on the original stories, as well as the Downey films and the Moffat/Gatiss show.</p><p>Set in Australia and with both Holmes and Watson being female. You don't need to read the previous two sections to understand this one, but it'll help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Joan came inside and sat down.

The rumble of the cars on the street below seemed muted; the colours were less bright. Files were stacked neatly, and all the books were in their proper place on the shelves. Dimly, Joan wondered if that was Sherlock’s doing, if she’d come to clean up before she had... but then she realised that it was probably Mrs Hudson, cleaning to distract herself after the funeral.

Joan leaned forward to the coffee table and pushed one of the stacks, roughly, so the papers fell to the floor. Scattered white with black lines, paperclips holding grainy photos in. Joan watched the last one settle on the rug and remembered the coat flying out behind Sherlock, like wings. Wings that did not catch her.

Alone, again.

For a time she sat there, her mind empty, the silence pressing in on her. She’d been alone before. She knew how to cope.

She should call Brad. He could comfort her. Or perhaps Harry. It had been, what was it, years? since she’d spoken to her brother.  

Maybe Lauren had a death she couldn’t quite figure out. She could pick up extra shifts, throw herself into her job, forget the world.

A world without Sherlock.

Joan didn’t move.

The first time, Sherlock had a good reason for leaving. Joan understood that, and didn’t blame her, not anymore. But this time, Joan didn’t understand. She couldn’t imagine what fact was so bad to push Sherlock over the ledge.

She wanted to scream. Punch, kick, anything. Anything at all.

Her gun was in her room, and eventually she gathered the energy to walk up the stairs, past the closed doors of Sherlock’s room.

The man at the shooting range said nothing, just took her money and directed her through the door. She let the earmuffs slip, let the noise surround her, fill her entire being, seeping into every aching crack inside of her.

It did nothing to block out the loneliness.  


	2. Chapter 2

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes_ , she thought, rolling out of bed. The heat of the shower was her saviour, every morning waiting like an old friend to piece her back together. The dreams were back. Bad ones, faceless shadows, black against black and terrifying noises she couldn’t describe.

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes._

Mrs Hudson hid the newspaper from her, but Joan could see the headlines as she walked past the stands.

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes._

Her therapist wanted to talk, and Joan didn’t. She wanted to scream at any god or demon listening, wanted to sell her soul to the devil to get Sherlock back.

Surely there would be one, final miracle. Something. Anything.

Sherlock could not be dead.

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes._

She dreamed strange dreams, dreams with fuzzy edges that left her with the false memory of Sherlock’s skin under her lips, of her body, gently writhing, of gasps of pleasure and the wide-open look in her eyes as she came. Memories based on imaginings that could never be lived.

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes._

Joan found herself making a second cup of tea long after she thought she was used to just the one. The smash was loud and brutal in the silence of the flat, and Mrs Hudson burst in to see the ceramic littering the lino.

“Oh, dear,” she said, and dropped to her hands and knees to clean it up. Joan simply stared. The cup had been a gift, something that Sherlock had given her. It should not be broken, yet she had to cling to the bench to stop herself from sweeping the rest of the teacups and the pot and the black boxes all neatly lined up onto the floor. Sherlock had fallen, so everything should fall.

“Dear, you need to get out,” said Mrs Hudson, gently, sweeping the last pieces into the bin. “There’s a movie I wanted to see. It’s foreign, and wouldn’t have to say anything.”

Joan thought about sitting in the silence with Mrs Hudson, watching subtitles flit across the screen. Mrs Hudson wouldn’t expect her to talk, or expect her to be happy. Perhaps she should say yes.

“No,” she mumbled, rubbing at her forehead. “Sorry.”

“Maybe another time,” said Mrs Hudson, gently.

She looked over the flat. It was clean, orderly. The files Joan had knocked over that first day were gone. Lestrade had come to pick them up one day, and they’d fumbled around each other, neither knowing what to say.

Sherlock’s violin was in its case by the desk, which was clear of everything. Mycroft had taken Sherlock’s laptop a few days after the funeral, and part of Joan had wanted to hiss at him. She’d reminded herself of Sméagol in that moment, about to turn into something dark and nasty in order to protect every last remnant of Sherlock, and had let him take it away. She hadn’t seen Mycroft since.

Her life was, again, empty of the Holmeses.

Empty of excitement.

Empty.

 

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes._


	3. Chapter 3

Joan never cried.

Even in sitting in the shower, water pulsing over her, breathing the lingering scent of Sherlock’s body wash, she didn’t cry.

She tried to remember if she’d cried at her mother’s death, and couldn’t. In those months following Sherlock’s death, she couldn’t remember anything except Sherlock, and she was afraid to push those thoughts away in case she couldn’t pull them back. Sherlock filled her mind, her every pore, her very soul, but it made no difference to the gap at her side.

Anderson came by, unexpectedly. Joan had just gotten home from work and was making a cup of tea, but Anderson declined. He merely handed her a photo, one taken at a crime scene of a crisply clear Sherlock smiling at the blurry blonde head of Joan. It was the nicest thing Anderson had ever done, but she didn’t cry.

She went to the shop to buy milk. Without Sherlock, she needed it less. The pile of tea disappeared more slowly, the sugar hardened into lumps from disuse. The fridge was dull, filled with regular food and edible things.

There was a woman at the shops in the same isle as her, basket in the crook of an elbow, her body thin beneath a long coat. Joan had seen the dark hair tumbling over her shoulder and had rushed up to her, grabbed her elbow and turned her around to find a round face with too many wrinkles staring, bewildered, back at her. Not Sherlock.

Joan left the milk there, left her basket of shopping and ran out, racing to find a universe where Sherlock wasn’t dead.

She didn’t cry, and Sherlock didn’t come back. 


	4. Chapter 4

Weeks passed, and folded into months.

Joan kept going through the motions. She went to work, she helped Lestrade with cases, she went to the pub with colleagues and laughed along with the people in her life.

Sherlock had always been so good at disappearing for days on end that, sometimes, Joan forgot that there was a gap beside her. Forgot that Sherlock hadn’t just lost track of time down in the laboratory, wasn’t off chasing a criminal on the streets of Melbourne. Joan would sit comfortably on Sherlock’s armchair and read one of Sherlock’s books, with Sherlock’s skull looking at her from the mantelpiece. And she forgot that Sherlock was really properly gone, until one of the other tenants slammed their door and Joan would look up to see it wasn’t a dark-haired, windswept figure rushing into the room ready to regal tales of a chase.

Once she even imagined she saw Moriarty and was nearly glad. She’d followed the figure for two blocks before she had remembered that even she was dead, and Sherlock was gone, and Joan was completely and utterly alone.

She overheard a conversation on the tram about fallen angels and moved to a different seat. The teenage girls didn’t know the half of it, and it hurt to listen to their ignorance.

Occasionally, she found a tall building and walked to the top of it, trying to figure out what Sherlock had been thinking in those last moments. The city stretched out around her, the wind cold and fresh, the skies always unable to make up their mind about what season it was. Either Joan was too stupid or Sherlock too enigmatic, but she soon put a stop to the habit since she learned nothing from it. Sherlock had jumped and she would never know why.

She ran out of tea, and bought more from Coles. It seemed wrong, but she couldn’t bear the thought of T2 without Sherlock. She bought a bulldog and called him Gladstone. Every night she came home from work and wandered the street with him as the shadows grew long and turned into night. Sleep was not a comfort, but then, nothing really was.

 

Brad and Liam came through town and stayed for several weeks in Joan’s old bedroom. Joan had taken Sherlock’s room, revelling in what little scent the walls kept in them. It hurt, but she’d rather suffer the pain than forget. She had nightmares about forgetting, when her nightmares were about anything at all.

“J, you’ve got to keep going.” Brad sat next to her on the grassy oval. Liam was giving them space, dribbling the soccer ball down the field. “I’m going to England next month. You could come with me, if you wanted.”

“You and Liam?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want to be a third wheel. I’m sorry, B. I’m trying.” 

He rested a hand gently on her back, reassuring her with his presence. 

“I know, I know you are. I’m just trying to think of something that would help.”

“I can’t tell if her secretly surviving would be the cruellest trick ever played, or the greatest miracle.”

“You’ve got to stop thinking like that,” said Brad, gently. He didn’t say that Sherlock was gone for good. He couldn’t cope with Joan’s face every time someone reminded her of that fact.

“I keep seeing things that remind me of her.”

“Perhaps you should move out of the flat.”

“No! All of her things are there.” She crossed her arms over her knees and stared at Liam. The tall, leggy man reminded her a little of Sherlock, floppy hair blowing in the cool evening breeze.

Everyone reminded her of Sherlock.

If she moved, she’d have to go through everything, box it all up and decide what to keep and what to leave. She couldn’t make that decision.

Brad pulled her into a hug. They watched the sunset and his boyfriend play soccer, and listened to the wind wash over the grass, and Joan felt hollow.  

 

Seasons passed. 


	5. Chapter 5

“Hey,” said the man in the hospital gift shop, a pretty smile on his face.

“Hello,” said Joan. She recognised him in a vague kind of way. Straight black hair and a cute upturned nose, and a smile for everyone. Joan hadn’t considered him to be attractive until she overheard some of the nurses gossiping about him. She hadn’t waited specifically for him to serve her, but the older lady had moved away from the cash register when Joan stepped up so he was the one taking the teddy from her hands and ringing it through.

“Is it for a kid?” he asked. The barcode wouldn’t register, and he had to type in the numbers. He had small hands, his short brown fingers a sad contrast with Sherlock’s. Joan pushed the memory aside.

“Patient’s kid,” said Joan, counting out several purple notes and handing them over. “Won’t shut up, so I figure this might help.”

“Is the mother going to be okay?” asked the man as he sorted out Joan’s change.

“Yeah. It’ll take a while, but yeah.”

“That’s good,” he said with a brilliant smile. Joan felt a familiar ache in her chest and smiled as well as she could manage. “Uh, hey,” he said, holding the change in his hand without passing it over. “Did you want to get coffee with me sometime?” Joan looked at him. There was nothing in his features that remotely resembled Sherlock.

It had been a while. Everyone told her to move on. She drew in a breath.

“Sure. That sounds great.” The man handed over the change, and Joan took it in a way so their fingers did not touch.

“I get off at 3. We can meet here and go to one of the cafes down the street?”

Joan avoided the streets outside the hospital, taking a long route to one of the disused entrances so she could avoid the street where Sherlock fell. She didn’t go to cafes near the hospital, didn’t talk walks on her breaks, didn’t do any of that kind of thing.

“Sure,” she repeated. “See you then.” The man gave her a brilliant smile, which Joan returned less happily.

 -

She didn’t want this.

The man’s name was Justin and he chatted easily about various nurses and books and his time at university. Apparently he’d started study to be a teacher, realised he didn’t want it and now just kind of wandered through jobs never knowing what he wanted. Joan hadn’t realised he was so young, and wondered what he was doing asking her out.

He insisted on sitting her down at a table and leaving her there to buy her a coffee. It had sugar in it when it was served, and Joan bit back from making a face. She hadn’t had sugar in her coffee since Sherlock and the hound... But she shoved the memory aside.

“You’ve been a doctor for a while,” he said, conversationally.

“You’re just saying that to find out how old I am.”

“No, I’m not!” he said with a smile. “Honestly. Why, is it weird that I asked you out?”

“A little. You do seem rather young.” She wondered what he would do if a man bled out on the living room floor, and couldn’t marry the calmness Sherlock displayed at tragedy with the young, boyish face in front of her.

“It’s rude to ask how old you are, but you’re pretty enough that I had to take the risk.”

“I’m a doctor and I did one and a half tours in Afghanistan. You can do the maths,” she said, drinking her too-sweet coffee and reminding herself that not everyone was Sherlock, and no one was Sherlock, because Sherlock was gone.

She couldn’t bring herself to think dead. Sherlock was just gone, as if she had disappeared to a private island, or to Siberia, or the moon. It didn’t matter. Joan had watched her fall, had seen the blood, had felt the pulse-less wrist. Sherlock was gone, permanently, forever and always, but any time Joan had to think of Sherlock being dead she couldn’t breathe, as though her lungs would give out if she weren’t at least existing in the same universe as Sherlock.

Justin was talking, and Joan hadn’t been paying attention.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Uh,” managed Joan.

“Sorry. I was prattling on a bit, there.”

“No, it’s not that, just,” she held back a sigh. It did not do to bring up the past on the first date, at least, not a past like Joan’s.

“You’re seeing someone else?” he guessed. Sherlock didn’t have to guess things. Sherlock just knew.

“No. My girlfriend,” she began.

“You’re a lesbian?”

“No,” snapped Joan, wanting him to stop interrupting her. “She’s,” she paused. “Gone.” She stared at his hands, circled around his cup of coffee, the sides streaked with foam.

“Ah,” he said, after a too-long pause as he worked out what she meant. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” the words came automatically, and hated herself for it. “Probably a bit much for you, though.” He gave a sad little smile.

“Probably.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said, standing.

“You can stay, we can just chat,” he said, but it was clear from his face he was just being polite.

“No, it’s fine.” She walked away without limping, with an empty pit in her stomach, too tired to even try to search for Sherlock amongst the faces on the street.

She couldn’t believe the world had kept on spinning.

 

 

Three years.

It was three years before things got better. 


	6. Chapter 6

Joan was so used to seeing Sherlock everywhere that she ignored the tall figure in knee-high brown boots and a long, swirling coat. She ignored the woman who crossed the street after her, with tumbling messy hair, ignored the slightly too-fat lady with nearly the right angle to her cheekbones.

Gone were the days of chasing down every person who reminded her of Sherlock.

She’d given up.

Gladstone didn’t much enjoy running anyway, and it probably would have been a great effort to startle the dog into a chase that would turn out to be based on a false assumption that Sherlock was still living. So Joan ignored the tall, dark-haired women in long, dark coats and blue scarves, and went to the shop to buy milk. Gladstone let himself be tied up to a rail and promptly fell asleep.

Her therapist had been pleased that she had gotten herself a dog. Company, she said, even if was in the form of an animal, was important. Gladstone was easier than anyone Joan had ever met. He liked wandering around on the streets of Melbourne just as much as he liked being curled up on the rug with one of Joan’s feet resting on his back.

Sherlock’s skull was right there, of course, but at least the dog occasionally pricked an ear to her conversation, or leaped to his feet if there was food to be had.

Lestrade called. It was not unusual. He called every few months, sometimes more often, with a case or just to have a five minute conversation. He held himself responsible, though Joan didn’t know why and had told him so.

Sherlock had done what Sherlock always did, that is, whatever she wanted, ignoring the rest of the world and their emotions.

No one had made her jump, Joan was quite certain in that conviction, and so Joan didn’t understand guilt about Sherlock. She understood anger, and despair, and a feeling of being completely lost. But never guilt.

He was calling about a body. Joan was not much of a consultant, but Lestrade still asked if she could poke around a crime scene, and most often Joan said yes. Her therapist hadn’t liked that for its connections with Sherlock, but Joan no longer saw her.

Joan knew the place, and took a tram.

Without Sherlock she could do that. Sometimes it was nice to be surrounded by strangers.

She took Gladstone with her, because he was well behaved even around dozens of strangers, and if anyone complained she could say she was with the police, which was true. She had a laminated card she was meant to hang around her neck on a lanyard but never did.

Lestrade gave the dog a long look as he opened the door, but said nothing. Gladstone sniffed the flowerbox at the gate of the apartment complex before trotting happily after them. 

Joan found an officer in the corridor and handed Gladstone’s lead to him. He looked a little bewildered, but when she was at a crime scene Joan liked to pretend she was a little more Sherlock and a little less Joan. The world could work its way around her, for once. The bulldog promptly lay down on the man’s foot.

The room was a typical apartment. A white Ikea coffee table sat between two uncomfortable looking couches with low backs, a flat TV along one wall and no books in sight. Everything was plain, and the only colour was an abstract painting over the kitchen table and the burst of blood on the wall.

“He was shot,” said Joan, before she had walked around the couch to see the body. The blood splatter on the wall told her enough. “In the head,” she added.

One of the forensics nodded at her, and she gave him a tight smile. It did not do to grin at a crime scene. The man had fallen where he had stood, and he looked nearly peaceful, a neat bullet just under his jaw. He was curled in the blood as though it were a blanket, and the carpet his bed. Joan knelt down next to the man in his blue suit and carefully lifted the dead man’s head. Tendrils of cerebral fluid and blood and bits of brain ran in sticky lines from his hair to the carpet, and there were splinters of bone all around.

“Pretty,” she said.

“It’s neat, at least.”

Joan moved the head slightly, staying carefully out of the puddle of blood. One smatter against the wall, one pool on the carpet, one dead man.

The rest of the apartment was pristine.

“No one heard a thing,” said Lestrade. Joan examined the bullet hole. It was neat, the edges burned.

“Close shot. I’m going to suggest a soft-point bullet.” She stood up. “You’re getting a list of everyone he knew, I presume. Probably a friend. Or perhaps a friend of a neighbour. Someone who could easily get into this building. Where’s the weapon?”

“Not here,” said someone. It wasn’t Donovan, or Anderson. They’d disappeared. Moriarty’s accusations had pushed Lestrade down the chain, and he’d spent his time working his way back up. He had a new team, one he trusted and who trusted him. The pale band on his finger had tanned over and he’d lost a bit of weight. They could fall into bed together, two friends distraught over the loss of a friend, but they never would.

“Anything taken?” Joan glanced around the apartment. TV was still in place, and his phone and wallet were already neatly in evidence bags on the table.

“No. We’re trying to find his wife.”

There was a glint of gold on his neck, and she leaned forward to find a necklace with a woman’s ring on it.

“Don’t bother, she’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

“He’s got her ring on a necklace. You don’t do that unless they’ve died.”

Joan was wearing nothing of Sherlock’s.

“Perhaps there’s children.” There were no photos on the walls, and, walking into the bedroom, none on the dresser or the side table. Only a picture of a beautiful woman obviously younger than he was.

“No,” said Joan. If there were children there would be pictures. One didn’t keep a picture of your long-dead wife by your bed and none of the children.

The photograph that Anderson had given Joan was in a frame beside Sherlock’s bed, which had been theirs for only a few nights, and Joan’s for three years.

She couldn’t believe it had been so long.

“Excellent,” said Lestrade, even though it was anything but.

“No motive, no weapon, no sign of forced entry, nothing taken and no family to go on.” Joan got a new glove, one without blood on the knuckles, and took the phone out of its little bag. “He doesn’t have many friends,” she said, noting the lack of recent data in the call log and the abundance of gaming apps. 

“Found something,” said one of Lestrade’s new lackeys. He offered up a folded piece of paper from the man’s left pocket.

“Was he left handed?” asked Joan, before she had even opened the paper. No one answered so she walked back into the study, and looked at the desk. “Yes,” she said, out loud, so that the others could hear.

“What does that matter?” called Lestrade.

“It means he put the paper there himself, probably,” she said, walking back into the main room of the apartment. “You don’t take a piece of paper with your other hand, and you don’t reach over the body to put it into the opposite pocket.”

“What does it say?”

“Friday, midday at the museum,” she read. “It’s typed,” she added, before passing it across to Lestrade. The inspector looked at it and sighed.

“That’s days away.”

“Two days,” said Joan.

“Yeah, well, it’s a bloody long time,” he growled.

 -

“So, nothing to go on,” said Lestrade, later, as they waited in line at the coffee shop for their order. They’d scoured the room for any more clues before abandoning the task as hopeless and fleeing the scene in search of coffee.

“Nothing, until Friday.”

The police station was just around the corner, but the office coffee was a disgrace to coffee everywhere, and Joan suspected he was trying to flirt with one of the baristas. It wasn’t going very far, but Joan did her best to look like a mere colleague or a lesbian or someone who wasn’t competition in the least. Gladstone wasn’t very helpful in that endeavour, and the woman cooed at him over the counter.

The inspector shot the dog a dark look, and a tall woman with dark hair smiled down at them. Sherlockian figures were everywhere, and Sherlock was nowhere, but Joan looked up at her all the same. The woman’s hair covered half her face, and her scarf the rest. She ignored Joan, and took the coffee from the lady. Its top was thick with cream, and ice rattled against the plastic sides. Joan looked away. It wasn’t Sherlock.

Joan took the coffee from Lestrade and walked with Lestrade to the station, and then took the tram back home to return Gladstone to his rug at the foot of Sherlock’s armchair. He fell asleep contentedly, giving a belated flick of his ear when she said goodbye to him before heading off to the hospital for the night shift. 


	7. Chapter 7

Joan stood next to the inspector at the entrance to the museum, watching a teacher attempt to organise a class of young children into two neat rows.

The phone in Joan’s pocket buzzed and she took it out, thinking it would be the hospital.

_Be careful_

Joan stared at the screen.

“What is it, Watson?” He peered over her shoulder at the screen. “The only people I know who send mysterious texts are long gone. Unless it’s Mycroft.”

“I haven’t heard from Mycroft since,” said Joan, not finishing the sentence. Lestrade’s gaze stopped on a man.

“He’s been standing there nearly as long as we have, and it’s passed midday. Jones, Douglas, do you see him? Blue coat, black pants, black scarf?” Lestrade listened to the confirmation on his earpiece. “We’re going over. Keep an eye on him, yeah?”

“You realise I’m only a consultant?” asked Joan.

“Then just stand there and look imposing. You can do that.”

The man looked at them warily as they walked over to him.

“I’m Inspector Lestrade,” he said, flashing his badge. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Perhaps.”

“You waiting for someone?”

“Is that a crime?”

“Just curious who,” said Lestrade in a disarming manner Joan had only seen in the last three years. Before that, she’d only seen him defensive or aggressive.

“His name is Ronald, okay?”

“Ronald Adair?”

“Yeah,” said the man, no less suspiciously. “How do you know?”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t look surprised,” offered Joan.

“He was in a bad situation. Owed the wrong people money.” The phone in Joan’s pocket buzzed again, and the screen showed the same message from the same unknown number.

“Lestrade,” she said, knocking the phone against his arm so he glanced down. He grimaced, but kept questioning.

“Do you know how much money?” The man shifted on his feet.

“Sixty thousand dollars.” Lestrade let out a low whistle. The apartment hadn’t looked the type of place that housed a man with money like that to spare.

“How did he do that?”

“Played poker.”

“With who?”

“I shouldn’t say,” he said.

“But you know,” insisted Joan. The hairs on the back of her neck were prickling, and she wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. Lestrade took a step closer, intending to stare down at the man and intimidate him into giving an answer.

“Greg!” yelled Joan, grabbing his arm and pulling him back roughly. There was a loud crack and the man in front of them dropped dead.

Joan stared around, Lestrade yelling into his earpiece at his officers.

The school kids hadn’t noticed the commotion, though a few were looking around in confusion at the gunshot. The teacher took advantage of their distraction from their play and hurried them into the museum, leaving the square eerily still.

Joan pulled the man’s wallet from his pocket.

“Does the name John Power mean anything to you?”

“No. We’ll run it when we get back to the station.”

Joan looked at the dead body.

“Makes me wish I still carried my gun around.”

“Not much you could have done, anyway.”

Joan waited around for an ambulance to come, and then joined the body in the back for a lift to the hospital in time for her shift.

 

She was exhausted from the day by the time she returned home, the light in the foyer burning brightly just for her. The couple in 221C lived a respectable life with a 9-5 job and a pair of budgerigars that made an astounding amount of noise anytime the cage was hung out the window. Joan switched off the light and made her way up the stairs, finding the key by feel and stepping into the apartment, grateful for the knowledge that there was a bed only a few short steps away waiting to embrace her.

She hung up her coat and went into the kitchen in search of a glass of water before bed.

The light in the living room was on. She hadn’t left it on, and Mrs Hudson wouldn’t have done more than give Gladstone his dinner.

Joan realised then that the dog hadn’t come to greet her at the door. As lazy as he was, he always came to sniff at her with polite interest when she got home.

There was no gun in the kitchen, and with the anonymous texts from the day she felt a dull weight settle in her stomach. Moving as silently as she could, she took a knife from the stand and stepped towards the light.

She stopped, stared, felt as though she’d been moved back all those years to the hospital laboratory. The face was slightly more tan, the lines around the eyes a little more indented, but the shape of her mouth was the same and the sharpness of her cheekbones was just as Joan remembered.

Gladstone broke the silence, his collar clicking as he jumped up and ran to Joan’s side.

“You,” said Joan.

“Me,” said Sherlock.

“I need to sit down,” she mumbled, and sat heavily.

“You won’t be needing that, I think,” said Sherlock, gesturing at the knife in her hand. It clattered onto the coffee table, kept free of weapons for three years.

“Am I seeing things? I’ve never hallucinated you before, hadn’t hallucinated anything, but there’s always a first time.”  

“I assure you I am just as real as that dog.”

“You were dead. I saw you.” She tightened her grip on the arm of the chair. “You were dead.”

She’d never said that before, had only said “Sherlock is no longer with us,” or, “she’s gone”. She’d never said anything quite so permanent as “dead”.

“I watched you fall.”

Sherlock said nothing, and Joan felt herself grow hot with the rage she thought she’d moved past.

“I begged you for a miracle. I begged you to come back. And it took you three years? Three fucking years?”

“I,” began Sherlock, but Joan didn’t want her to speak, didn’t want her version of a reasonable explanation.

“We were together. We were more than friends, we were partners, in everything. Why did you do it? What was so fucking important that you couldn’t tell me? And why the hell did you stay away?”

“Moriarty, she wanted you dead,” said Sherlock, head bowed, voice small.

“Wow, that’s news.”

“Don’t be sarcastic at me, Joan, I don’t like it.”

“And I didn’t like thinking you were dead for three years, but we don’t always get what we want.”

“She was going to kill you, and Mrs Hudson, and everyone I care about, unless I jumped.”

Joan stared.

“Oh,” she managed.

“Why did you think I did it?”

“I had no idea. None at all.” Joan examined her hands. They were clean and slightly dry between the knuckles from being constantly washed. “You still could have told me. In that phone call.”

“What? ‘Hey honey, gotta kill myself else someone will blow your brains out. X-O-X-O’?” Sherlock sneered. Joan said nothing, and the silence stretched.

“You got a dog.”

“Gladstone. He keeps me company.”

“I ruined things, didn’t I?” asked Sherlock, her face uncertain, and where Joan thought she would have felt pity she instead felt anger.

“Killing yourself tends to have that affect,” she snapped.

“I thought,” began Sherlock.

“That you could just waltz back in here and everything would be the same?”

“I died for you.”

“That’s a manipulative and shitty reason to demand someone get back with you. I was wrong to trust you.” She stood up, intending to stalk off to bed, before she remembered that her room was Sherlock’s old room, and she didn’t know what to do with Sherlock being here, now.

“They’re trying to kill me,” said Sherlock.

“What? Are you sharing information with me again?”

“Ronald Adair,” said Sherlock, ignoring Joan’s tone of voice, “he owed money to Colonel Moran. Moran was one of Moriarty’s men, his marksman, actually. Moran killed Adair, as well as that man at the museum today.” Joan sat back down.

“You sent those text messages.”

“Yes. Moran knows I’m not dead, and is intending to kill me.”

“So of course you came back to Baker Street, putting myself and Mrs Hudson at risk. Makes perfect sense.”

“I didn’t,” Sherlock started, and then faltered to a stop. “I have a plan.”

“Great. It can wait until morning. I’m going to bed. I took your old room, so you can sleep in mine, or on the couch, or get a hotel. I don’t care.”

“Joan.”

“No, Sherlock. You can’t do what you did and expect it all to be fine. Today I watched a man die and fixed a kid with bone sticking out of his leg. I will deal with this tomorrow.”

She tapped her thigh with her fingers and Gladstone heaved himself up and trotted after her, his nails clicking on the floor.

Joan scarcely bothered stripping, just pulled off her shirt and her pants and curled up amongst the sheets, Gladstone a heavy weight against her legs. Her mind was filled with a solid, blank rage that exhausted her before she was able to wrap her mind around Sherlock being alive. She woke the next morning feeling hung over, like the whole universe had been wrenched awry. 


	8. Chapter 8

Sherlock had made her tea. It was different tea, too, tea that Joan hadn’t had in the cupboard. There was a brightly orange box by the kettle. Joan didn’t bother reading the label.

Sherlock was on the couch, laptop on her thighs and a blanket neatly folded at her side. Nothing had changed since Joan had left the house the previous day. The kettle was still in its place, the books all lined neatly and the mess quietly kept at bay.

Joan turned the kettle on again and drank the tea in quick gulps, putting one of her own teabags into the cup without rinsing it out, and refilled it. She made toast, giving Gladstone the crust of the loaf and putting food into his bowl while she waited. Only once she had food on a plate and tea in her hand did she sit down in her armchair to finally face Sherlock.

“You’re really back.”

“Yes.”

“Not dead.”

“No.”

“How did you do that?”

“Sarah helped.”

“You went to Sarah, and not me?”

Sherlock hung her head.

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you.” Joan knew she was being cruel but couldn’t stop. It had been three years.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, staring at the floor, hands limp in her lap.

Joan sighed. This wasn’t how she’d imagined their reunion, and from the way Sherlock was acting it was clear it wasn’t how she’d imagined it, either.

“Just tell me your plan to avoid dying again.”

“They know I’m back here. I have a model of me.” She pointed to the floor beside Gladstone’s pile of rugs, where a Sherlock-shaped mannequin was lying. “I want us to be seen tonight, together, coming back here. I’ll put the model up in the window so they think I’m here. They’ll shoot it, think I’m dead, and in the meantime we lurk and catch Moran in the act of trying to kill me.”

“Sounds flawless.”

“It is,” said Sherlock, missing the scathing in Joan’s voice. It had been three years, perhaps she’d forgotten how to read her perfectly. Joan didn’t much care. When she woke up she had thought the anger the previous night had just been from the tiredness, the stress of the day, but it wasn’t at all.

“I’ve got work.”

“Oh.”

“What did you think I was going to do? Pine about waiting for you?”

“No,” she whispered.

“I’ll swap the shift.”

“I’m ruining your life, again.”

“No, you’re not,” said Joan. There had never been enough of a life to be ruined, even back before year twelve, before Sherlock had ever entered her life. Things had always been broken. Her parents had seen to that, and her brother had seen to that, and her life had been fractured right from the start. Sherlock was just helping the process.  

She rang the hospital, and they didn’t mind. She always took extra shifts when they were available, and never tried to get out of one once her name was written down. She did her job, kept her head down, and always made sure everyone around her was comfortable before she thought about herself. That was why she’d become a doctor. Always giving. Even when someone had taken her heart and thrown it from a roof, made her watch it bleed out onto the pavement, she kept on giving.

Sherlock was clicking away on the laptop.

“That’s the same one you had before,” realised Joan. “Mycroft came and took it away.”

“I needed it.”

“Sarah knew, and Mycroft knew. But not me.”

“I needed to keep you safe.”

“But not Sarah.” Joan didn’t say Mycroft, because Mycroft ran the Commonwealth, and didn’t need protecting by his little sister.

“Sarah was too little for Moriarty to notice.” She paused, and corrected herself. “No. Moriarty was too little in her view of the world. She was too stupid to realise how important Sarah is.”

“You see her, then?”

“Not often. I haven’t been in the country until recently. We emailed, when I thought it was safe.”

“You’ve been travelling?”

“Running. Learning. Cleaning up after Moriarty.”

“Of course,” said Joan, biting back the bitterness that Sarah had been told, but not her. She had always known what it would come down to. Joan was too insignificant to hold Sherlock’s attentions for long. “I have to walk Gladstone,” she said abruptly, although the dog would have been happy enough sleeping for the entire day. She grabbed her coat and put the leash onto the unwilling dog. She had money enough in her pocket for coffee; she could stay out of the apartment all day if she wanted.

“Joan,” said Sherlock, before Joan had quite twisted the handle on the door. “I meant what I said. I love you.”

Joan said nothing, just stomped down the stairs into the bitterly cold world.

April was the cruellest month.

- 

It had rained, and Joan turned the collar of her coat up against the wind. Gladstone was less than pleased to be out amongst the elements, but Joan kept walking past the corner cafe. She felt certain that a camera turned to watch her cross the street, but she resisted the urge to put her finger up at Mycroft.

Three fucking years, and no one had bothered to tell her she could stop feeling so hollow, that she was right, that she wasn’t alone.

She should have been thrilled. Having Sherlock back, that had been what she had dreamed of, what she had begged for that day at the cemetery.

Her hand ached to hold a gun, but that was back at 221B Baker Street, with Sherlock Holmes and the whole mess that was her life, so she pushed on. The wind was sharp, cutting through her layers all the way to the bone.

Eventually, she stopped at a cafe. Gladstone was glad to be given a place to lie down, even if it was on damp brick underneath a rickety outside table. The coffee was hot and gave extra fuel to her thoughts.

She remembered one day, before the fall, when she had come home from hospital after a shift that was too long and a line of patients that had never ended to bright and cheerful music playing. Sherlock had been in her underwear and dressing gown, spinning. She’d pulled Joan’s bag away from her and tossed it carelessly onto the floor, and grabbed Joan’s hands, pulling her in.

“What is this?” asked Joan, laughing.

“Schubert,” said Sherlock, and that hadn’t been what Joan meant but she’d laughed. Sherlock had smelled like flowers, and the Christmas lights were still decorating the wall.

They’d danced and kissed and tumbled together, like two giddy teenagers only just discovering each other.

Joan wondered if they’d ever get back to that. She wondered if she wanted to get back to that.

 

-

 

Sherlock watched the door for a long time after Joan had gone, waiting and hoping that she would return. She did not.

Melancholic, she took her violin from its case and began to tune it. It had been so long, and yet her fingers found the keys as easily as if she had been playing every day. Sherlock was surprised. She had thought she would be able to slide back into her old life, but after Joan she was surprised when anything was the same. She was surprised by the way the tap in the shower worked, was surprised by the creak of the floorboards and the way the frayed edge of the rug nearly tripped her up each time she stepped on it. They were all familiar to her, but Joan was different, so how could anything else be the same?

Sherlock had spent so long trying to work out how to make life safe from Moriarty that she had never even considered that Joan might not want her back.

 

 -

 

She didn’t get home until it was late, studiously avoiding the apartment and places where Sherlock might go. She bought her father’s birthday present and had it wrapped and posted. The aquarium held entertainment for an hour, and then she meandered the city, bewildered at the masses of people continuing in their life as though Sherlock had not returned.

The anger shrank, and left, and was replaced by a bone-deep weariness. Tired of Sherlock. Tired of looking after her, of running around for her, of shaping her life around what Sherlock was and what Sherlock was not.

Her phone buzzed with a text when she was eating dinner at a cafe a few blocks from Baker Street.

_Camden House, 7 pm  
SH_

She snarled at the phone, and it buzzed again.

_Please. It’s important.  
SH_

Joan stubbornly finished eating her meal and had another coffee, lingering over it as she finished the crossword. Only then did she get up and go to the house in question, down Manchester Street and up into Blandford Street. Joan had found the house in her wanderings following Sherlock’s death, and knew to walk down a narrow passage, through a wooden gate and into a small yard overgrown with weeds. It was dark, the sky cloudless and inky black.

Joan jumped when a hand snaked around her wrist.

“It’s me,” said Sherlock, as though it could be anyone else. She was tugged through the doorway into a pitch black room, the floorboards creaking under her feet. When she put her hand against the wall to guide her movements she felt the paper, fragile and peeling.

“What are we doing here?” asked Joan, blinking in vain at the large, empty room. There was only a little light coming in from the street beyond the window, which was thick with dust.

Sherlock gave a little mysterious smile, but Joan didn’t want to play along.

“Tell me, or I’m leaving.” Sherlock’s smile vanished.

“We’re opposite Baker Street,” said Sherlock in a clipped voice. “And that window provides an excellent view of that house. If you care to look through the window, all will be revealed. Be careful not to let yourself be seen,” she added as Joan begrudgingly complied.

The window of Joan’s apartment was clearly visible, and she stared at it. Clearly visible behind the closed blind was the silhouette of Sherlock, sitting as she had often done at the desk by the window looking all the world as though she were focusing hard on something. Even as Joan watched, the figure moved, and raised a cup of tea to her lips. Despite herself, she was impressed.

“When did you make it?”

“While you were out today,” she said, and Joan could hear the accusation hidden there. “It will drink the tea for another seventeen minutes, after which the movements will become those such as what I typically make when working at the laptop. Moran knows I am there, as I saw one of his sentries both yesterday and this morning noting my movements. I went out to get food,” she added, “your fridge did not interest me, and I had to ensure they knew for certain that I was at the flat. Moran knows I am back in Melbourne, and perhaps even suspects that I know he is after me, though I tried to make it appear as though I thought Moriarty’s nest of snakes were all exterminated. But, he has no idea how close I am to him.”

Joan nodded, and then gave a startled cry as Sherlock hauled her back into a dark corner of the room.

“Hush,” said Sherlock, her voice close against her ear. Joan shivered at the hot breath.

There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and then the floor cracked and creaked. Through the shadows Joan could make out a figure walking across the room, completely oblivious to their being crouched in the corner. He appeared older than Joan had imagined, but he had a grin on his face and his eyes were bright.

In his hand he held a briefcase, which he put down on the dusty floor by the window and snapped it open, pulling a rifle from it.

There was a long, tense moment. Joan could feel Sherlock poised beside her, coiled and waiting.

The man at the window sighed with satisfaction, the dim light giving his grin a demonic air. There was a smack and the sound of broken glass. The moment his finger had pressed against the trigger Sherlock had leaped, hurling the man onto his face. Joan ran up beside her, grabbed the fallen gun and used it to strike the man on the back of his head.

“You can come out, now, boys!” called Sherlock. There was a clatter of feet on the floor, and Joan blinked at the sudden light of torches.

“Lestrade,” said Sherlock.

“Sherlock. Dare I say it’s good to see you back.”

“I just solved a number of murders for you, so I suppose you should dare.” She pushed herself up off the man’s back. “This is Colonel Moran, responsible for the death of Ronald Adair and John Power, and the attempted murder of yours truly.” She peered out of the window. “Joan, we need a new pane of glass.”

“We? That’s my flat.”

“How can you afford it by yourself?” asked Sherlock mildly. Joan sneered at Sherlock’s presumption that she could just move back in.

“I got a pay rise,” she growled.

“I thought Moran was going to be in the upstairs room,” said Lestrade, choosing to ignore their little quarrel. “That’s where we were waiting.”

“I thought so too,” said Sherlock. “But it is no matter.” One of the police officers put handcuffs on Moran, helping him to his feet.

“You,” snarled Moran.

“Me. My apologies. If Jennifer couldn’t beat me, what do you think you, a mere man could do?”

“Your misandry’s showing,” sighed Joan.

“Lestrade knows I respect him despite his sex,” said Sherlock with a cheery grin. “Congratulations on wrapping up one of the biggest underground crime rings in the world.”

“Thank you, I’m sure,” Lestrade said, the corner of his mouth tilting up slightly. “I’ll be taking that,” he added. Joan surrendered the gun without protest.

“I would thank you to keep my name out of this matter,” said Sherlock.

“You’re staying dead?”

“No, but I want to stay quiet, at least for a time.”

“If you get bored I have a box of unsolved crimes.”

“Send them over sometime.”

“To Baker Street?” he asked, glancing at Joan. Sherlock had been speaking with authoritative ease until then, where her steady gaze faltered and she appeared, for a moment, to curl into herself.

“I shall collect them from you when I am settled.”

“That would be best,” Joan said, stiffly.

 -

They made their way silently back to the flat.

“Do you want me to move out?” asked Sherlock, after they had cleaned up the mess made by the bullet and Sherlock and turned the mechanics of the bust off.

“Who said I wanted you to move back in?”

“Joan, what did I do that was so horrendous?”

“You left me! For three fucking years, you left me. That is not a kind game to play on someone. That is not something you do to someone you love.”

“I did it because I love you! They wanted you dead, Joan,” she pleaded, “I had to.”

“And Mycroft and Sarah?”

“Sarah was too off their radar to be in any danger, and Mycroft can take care of himself.” Joan stared at her, struggling to gather her thoughts together into something she could speak aloud.

“You can stay here,” she relented, and Sherlock visibly relaxed. “You’ll never find another flatmate, and I don’t suppose you’re about to take up regular paid work to afford a place on your own.”

“And what about us?”

“Let me get used to having you in my life again.”

“You’re going to make me wait?”

“Three years, Sherlock. You can give me a day or two.”


	9. Chapter 9

Joan lay in bed in the early morning light, the anger that had held her together dissipating even as she stretched and gathered herself together for the day. Sherlock was asleep on the couch, and despite herself Joan found herself tiptoeing about, making breakfast and preparing for work.

“Good morning,” said Sherlock.

“Kettle’s boiled,” said Joan, without turning. “I have to be off.”

“Of course.” Joan glanced over at her, and Sherlock looked as though she were about to say something. Quickly, Joan finished the last of her toast and grabbed her bag.

“Have a good day,” she said as the door swung shut behind her.

 -

Between patients and during routine procedures Joan mulled things over, as she had promised she would, and realised that the hole inside of her had been filled in.

Sherlock was back. Sherlock was alive. Sherlock was in her world again, in her flat again, on her couch with her laptop and her lips pressed tight together as she worked out how solve the universe.

Sherlock was there, and Joan was here, and the distance between them suddenly felt like a great gulf that was tearing her up, grinding down her bones and devouring her.

She couldn’t breathe.

“Are you alright, Dr Watson?”

“Yes, James,” she managed. “Can I have your arm, now?”

“Do I get a jelly bean?”

“Even better,” Joan forced a smile, “you’ll get two.”

The seven year old happily gave his arm over for the injection.

She had to get home, she thought, but it wasn’t even lunch time.

“Tessa,” she called. The nurse looked up.

“Joan, are you alright?”

“I think... I need to get home.”

“You look like it. Don’t worry, hurry along.” Joan nodded gratefully and hurried from the hospital.

She got to the stop just as the tram was pulling away, and she waited anxiously for the next one. All the lights were against her, all the streets were crowded.

Everything was against her getting to Sherlock.

Her key jammed in the lock and she twisted viciously, angry at the door that separated her from Sherlock. Mrs Hudson opened the door and stared at her.

“What’s happened?”

“I just,” she began, but didn’t know how to explain so she pushed past to the top of the stairsand suddenly didn’t know how to proceed.

The door creaked as it opened. Joan had never noticed that before. Perhaps it was new. Perhaps it was very old. She’d never noticed.

The flat seemed empty.

No violin, no clicking, no tapping keys, no whistling kettle.

In the three years without Sherlock, Joan had thought she had learned all about the different types of silence, but this one was new. This one was pregnant, it was alive and lurking.

The kitchen was empty and the living room was empty, except Sherlock’s laptop was still there. It looked at home on the coffee table, and even though there was no reason for Sherlock to have gone anywhere Joan felt an overwhelming relief that she was still there.

The bathroom door was wide open and no one was in Sherlock’s room.

The stairs creaked as Joan stepped up them. Her bedroom door was slightly ajar, and it swung open at her touch without a sound.

Sherlock sat on the edge of the bed, shoes off and shirt unbuttoned.

“I was going to move my things up here,” she said, hoarsely. “But this is your room, and that other one, that one’s not mine anymore, it’s all yours.” She stared at Joan, and there were tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I should never have,” but she didn’t finish because Joan had crossed the room and taken her lips up in hers, pushing her down onto her bed and claiming her, entirely. Their mouths were hot and hard against each other, mixed with the salt of Sherlock’s tears and the bitterness of the coffee still on Joan’s tongue.

They clung together tightly, with no finesse in their caresses, their teeth knocking against each other and their tongues slippery and wet. Joan’s hands pulled against Sherlock, trying to draw her in, trying desperately to consume every ounce of her being so that she could never again leave.

The buttons on Sherlock’s pants were confusing, there was a zip and a slide and a button, and Sherlock yanked her hand away and undid them herself, pulling them down and pushing Joan’s hands roughly back on her hips. Her skin was soft and hard in turns, and Joan dug her fingernails in as she kissed and sucked at Sherlock’s throat. She smelled and tasted just as Joan remembered, and she moaned as hands shoved under her shirt and bra and long, warm fingers teased her nipples.

“Fuck, Sherlock,” she growled into skin. “What are you doing?”

Sherlock suddenly wrapped her arms around her and flung her over, the mattress bouncing under her.

“Saying sorry.” She sat up and kicked her pants off properly, then set to stripping Joan.

She did it slowly, carefully, taking off every layer with a reverence Joan had never thought her capable of. As cold air met her skin, Sherlock kissed and caressed, tracing the shape of her scars and the patterns of her freckles, taking note of each shiver and moan that Joan made.

Joan wanted to do something back, wanted to play a part in the apology, because she had been so angry, but Sherlock tore her hands away whenever she tried and so she let them rest, one on the cold, crumpled sheets at her side and the other in the thick curls of Sherlock’s head. Sherlock’s tongue ghosted over a nipple, then dipped and traced the curve of her breast. She gasped, and Sherlock smiled into her skin and did it again to the other, her fingers light against her hips and the insides of her thighs.

She was slow and torturous, her fingers slowly stroking against the tender skin and over the damp hair.

“Come on, Sherlock, please, just,” she groaned. 

Sherlock didn’t listen, just moved her tongue down, nipping gently at the skin of her belly, circling one hand around to grab at Joan’s arse. The feel of Joan against her, shaking slightly, bucking against her face desperately, was more than she could wait for, and with one desperate hand she pushed aside her own underwear and moaned as she touched herself.

Joan’s fingers tightened in Sherlock’s hair as Sherlock’s finger brushed against her clit and slid along the length of her.

“Oh,” managed Joan, and didn’t get further because Sherlock’s lips had moved from her thigh to her clit, and there were fingers pushing into her, and everything shrank down to just Sherlock, Sherlock here, her hair rubbing against Joan’s legs and fingertips a bruising grip on her hip. Her fingers were trapped in knots in Sherlock’s hair and she couldn’t breathe. With a shuddering cry she bucked up, and felt Sherlock gasp beneath her.

Sherlock sighed and smiled up at her. Joan lay in a blissful daze.

“Apology accepted,” said Joan softly, remembering with distant sadness Sherlock’s promise to her so long ago, that they’d get back to that later.

“Was that,” Sherlock paused. She had spent the years imagining and hoping for something of the kind when she returned to Joan’s life, and now that it had happened she was gripped by the fear that it hadn’t been enough. That she wasn’t good enough, and the anger Joan had felt would bubble over again.

“It was perfect,” sighed Joan. “I’ve wanted that for a long time, and,” she sighed again, and turned to kiss Sherlock. “That was perfect. Do you have clothes and things with you?”

“Some.”

“There’s space in the cupboard,” she said. “The one in my room. Under one condition.”

“Anything,” said Sherlock. Anything, and she meant it. She’d give up solving crimes, cut her hair off, take up yoga, join a nunnery, for Joan. “Anything,” she repeated.

“Don’t leave. Not again. Not ever.”

“I didn’t want to in the first place,” Sherlock said. “I will never leave you, never again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For obvious reasons I'm somewhat nervous about this chapter. I think there's a point where you have to say, no, enough is enough and this will never get better. This chapter is one of those points. 
> 
> There's only one chapter left.


	10. Chapter 10

Joan made a cup of tea while Sherlock began sorting through the box of case files Lestrade had given them. Sherlock had been back a week. Joan had expected her to slide back into her life seamlessly, but Joan had adopted habits which Sherlock didn’t know and while there was no awkwardness there was a sense of unfamiliarity there.

At first, Joan had thought Sherlock was trying hard to be more reasonable, more emotionally aware, but it seemed that her time playing dead had changed her. She seemed more human, less ethereal and strange. Joan loved her all the same, just as she’d loved the awkward, abrasive teenager and the sociopathic detective.

Having her back filled the hole inside Joan. They went to dinner together, and somehow it was not tense. They talked of what had happened in the years between, Sherlock eager to listen to the things she had missed out on, and Joan found the last tendrils of anger slipping away.

Each night they went to bed together in a tangled embrace, bodies pressed tight and they slept holding the other tightly, so they could not leave. Slowly, they learned to let go a little, to roll to their own side and to trust the other would be there in the morning.

Weeks passed.

Sherlock disappeared to solve crimes while Joan fixed broken bodies and walked the unwilling bulldog around Melbourne. The sound of the violin woke her up and sent her to sleep, and, once, only once, did Sherlock fire her pistol inside. But she claimed the trigger had been sticking, and she had to test it.

Slowly the fridge filled with strange concoctions, but room was left for actual food.

Gladstone was sent to sleep half a dozen times as a result of Sherlock’s experiments, and the local vet became Joan’s friend in the process.

 

Seasons passed.

 

-

 

“Have you ever thought about having children?” Sherlock asked one Saturday morning, quite innocently. Joan looked up from the paper.

“Sometimes, why? ‘County flags’, five letters. Starts with ‘w’.”

“Do you want any?”

Joan regarded her carefully.

“Why?”

“No reason. Answer is ‘wilts’,” added Sherlock. Joan narrowed her eyes at the other woman, but continued on with her crossword nonetheless.

“What do you think of Kangaroo Island?” asked Sherlock after a long stretch of silence, marred only by Joan’s rustling of the paper and Sherlock’s tapping on her laptop.

“South Australia Kangaroo Island?”

“There are no others in the world.”

“I’ve never been.”

“There’s a farm for sale.”

“Does this tie into the conversation about children?” asked Joan, tapping her pen. She was stuck on another word, but it was about goddesses and Sherlock wouldn’t know the answer.

“Perhaps.” Sherlock clicked something on her laptop. “What about Leeton?”

“New South Wales, now? Am I to presume there is yet another farm there?”

“Along with quite an array of schools, and TAFE.”

“We’re still on the children question. Very well.” Joan set down her paper. “Have you considered having children?”

“On occasion, yes. My years were lonely, and I liked to have a future to look forward to,” she explained. “I don’t fancy bringing the child up in a city, and recently I’ve been wondering if maybe I should retire.”

“You, retire?”

“At least move to a place with fewer murders. I’ve been considering taking up bee-keeping. I kept bees when I was younger. I miss it.” Joan struggled for an answer. Finally, she said,

“Does Leeton have a hospital?”

“It does. And it’s an hour and a half from Wagga Wagga and twenty minutes from Narrandera.”

“I’m not driving half an hour for work,” said Joan. “What’s the name of a moon goddess, four letters?”

“No idea,” said Sherlock instantly. “You could get a job at Leeton.”

“Are there any jobs going? What’s ‘drink after a social game’, nine letters?”

“Hopscotch. I don’t know why you insist on doing those crosswords, they don’t aid in preventing brain deterioration.”

“I enjoy them. How much is the farm in Leeton?”

“Are you actually considering this?”

“I’m not particularly tied to Melbourne.”

“No,” said Sherlock, “a family. You, me, a child.”

“Who would carry it?”

“We could flip a coin.” Joan guffawed.

“Your hips are not up to taking a child. I wonder if Brad would donate,” she mused. “He doesn’t want kids, and neither does Liam, but I think he’d enjoy being an uncle. How much is the farm?”

“We can afford it. And with Wagga so close I could step out of retirement if I wanted. Or even lecture at the university. Our son would have options.”

“Son?” said Joan. “Really?” Sherlock raised her eyebrows.

“All this conversation, and 'son' is where you get held up?”

“Do you have a name picked out for him?”

“Hamish,” said Sherlock with a distant smile. Joan frowned, thinking.

“Okay.”

“Just like that? ‘Okay’?” Joan shrugged.

“I like the name Hamish. I’ll talk to Brad, you find me a job in Leeton, and we’ll figure something out then.” She looked back at the paper. “Ahh, Rhea,” she sighed, happily filling the moon goddess of thirteen across.

“Really?” asked Sherlock doubtfully. Joan looked up, and smiled.

“Really. I would love to have a family with you.” 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter. Everyone who has read all the way to here, thank you so much. I started writing this because I wanted to push myself to write everyday, and to learn where my major flaws are, and what I need to work on (if you have any specific comments feel free to share, as a reader your insight is valid). The fact that other people actually wanted to read this beyond the first chapter of the first part still somewhat astonishes me.
> 
> I don't know if I will write another fanfiction, and I don't know if I'll write another one on this scale. I have left this one open to the possibility of continuing it on, but I am making absolutely no promises. I'm ojirawel on tumblr, if you want to chat elsewhere.
> 
> The crossword Joan is doing is the Times Cryptic (No. 25359) from 31 December 2012. 
> 
> Of course, endless apologies to Arthur Conan Doyle for what I have done to Holmes and Watson. I think this more than makes up for the nightmares he gave me about The Hound of the Baskervilles.


	11. To Continue The Tale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter of the story of Sherlock and Joan and their son. I will continue it on in a work not linked with this series. [You can find it here, titled "One Will Crown Me King"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/643312/chapters/1167624).

Joan lay back in the hospital bed, watching with exhausted happiness as Sherlock crooned over her baby.

Their baby.

Their son.

She still wasn’t entirely certain how Sherlock had managed to ensure it was a son. Sex selection was illegal in Australia, but perhaps Sherlock had somehow managed to lie about sex-linked diseases. Or she’d gotten Mycroft in on it. Joan hadn’t wanted to ask and Sherlock hadn’t shared.

“Hamish Watson,” whispered Sherlock as she gently stroked the baby’s forehead.

“No,” said Joan. “Hamish Holmes.”

“Watson.”

“Holmes.”

“Watson-Holmes?” suggested Sherlock, knowing already she was going to lose this battle. She’d lost so many in the months of the pregnancy, and happily, too.

She’d lost the battle where they did not have rings, since Joan would have to take hers off for work, and it would be too unnatural for Sherlock to wear any jewellery beyond a watch. Their surnames did not match and Sherlock had been made to get her driver’s licence in preparation for the months of Joan being incapacitated and their move to Leeton.

 “Hamish Bradley Holmes,” said Joan, firmly, although she wasn’t entirely certain on the middle name. That particular discussion had never reached its conclusion. Brad, peering over Sherlock’s shoulder, spoke up.

“Hold up a second, you want my name to be his?” Joan nodded.

“If you’d like it. I don’t plan for you to be some faceless gene-sharer.”

“I want to be part of his life, but, really? A name?”

“It should be Watson,” said Sherlock, stubborn and ignored.

“What about Mycroft?” asked Brad. Liam snorted, but only because Mycroft wasn’t in the room. “Or some male variant of your middle name, J.”

“Uh,” started Joan. “You promised to never speak of that.”

“What is it?” asked Liam. Sherlock smirked, but no one answered him.

“James?” suggested Brad instead.

“That would remind me of Jennifer,” said Sherlock, uncomfortable to be speaking that name while holding her son.

“He could have no middle name. That would solve things,” suggested Liam. He shut up at the withering glare Sherlock gave him.

Joan and Sherlock had put their plans for moving to a farm in Leeton on hold until the baby was born, while Brad and Liam had taken up residence in Melbourne permanently. That had been partly to stay near to Joan and partly because Liam’s job had demanded it. Despite denying it wholeheartedly, Liem and Sherlock were actually friends.

“Can I pick it?” asked Brad. “Sherlock gets the first name, Joan gets to pick his surname, and I, as gene-donor, gets to choose the middle one.” Joan looked at Sherlock, and Sherlock nodded.

“Okay.”

“Nice, isn’t it, the three of us all together after all this time.” He looked happily at his high-school friends, although, in all honesty, his only care for Sherlock back then had been her hold over his best friend, Joan.

Brad looked deep into Hamish’s face. Despite his huge round face and old-man features he looked nearly like Brad, with a slight head of dark hair and big brown eyes.

“I dub thee,” he smirked. “Arthur. Hamish Arthur Holmes, a Knight of the Round Table.”

“Seriously?” asked Liam. Joan and Sherlock just stared.

“You gave me the power, and I have chosen. Now, where’s that nurse with that name form?” Sherlock exchanged a look with Joan, who shrugged to say, well, we gave him the power. Hamish gave a little gurgling noise and any frustration Sherlock might have had was instantly taken away.

“Can I come in?” Mrs Hudson was at the door, and Sherlock held Hamish out to her. He was taken up in excited arms and cooed down at.

“He’s beautiful. How’s the mother?”

“I’m well,” said Joan. “Better than I expected.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said a calm, familiar voice. Mycroft looked extremely out of place in his suit, a sight which was made more strange by Mrs Hudson pushing Hamish at him. He looked down at the baby in his arms somewhat quizzically.

“To whom do I have the honour?”

“Hamish Arthur Holmes,” said Brad, proudly.

“Arthur?”

“He’s a knight.” To his credit, Brad, unlike his partner, did not quail under Mycroft’s steady gaze. Mrs Hudson, noticing that Hamish was slipping, quickly took the child back, much to Mycroft’s relief.

“Am I interrupting?”

The small room quickly became more crowded, with Lestrade entering and Sarah trailing after with him. He held a bright blue teddy in one hand and a case file in the other. Joan eyed it but said nothing when it was handed to Sherlock. She took Hamish back and showed him the teddy, making the introductions to Sarah and happily chatting with Mrs Hudson. Her mind snapped back to Sherlock the moment she heard dissent in her voice.

“Lestrade, I cannot. We are leaving in a month, and until then I have to look after my wife.”

There was some bitterness to the title, but legality aside Sherlock refused to not use it.

“I appreciate the murder, but I feel that this case in particular might be more up my brother’s alley. Regardless, I cannot and will not take it.”

Lestrade had the good sense to avoid looking at Joan as he took the case file back. Mycroft held out a hand and, hesitantly, he gave it over, missing the curious look the elder Holmes gave him. Sherlock, meanwhile, had moved back next to the bed where she put a finger into Hamish’s hand, smiling at the size of it. Joan bent down and kissed her clumsily on the thumb, and Sherlock smiled. She’d never thought they’d have a family, and yet. Hamish made the first attempts of a wail, and she quickly hurried all the visitors outside so that Joan could feed their son.

Their son.

She was still amazed by that. 


End file.
